LIMA, Peru — People identifying themselves as activists in the Anonymous hacker movement said Wednesday it wasn't technical prowess but police infiltration that yielded 25 arrests in a sweep in Europe and South America.

In conversations in an online chat room where Spanish-speaking activists in the Americas and Spain regularly gather, they said nearly all of those arrested had been active on a single website used by the group.

Among those detained were a Spaniard known by the online nickname "Pacotron" or "Thunder," according to Spanish police and a communique issued by Anonymous Iberoamerica, which said he lives in Malaga.

The statement by the loosely organized collective's Spanish-language branch identified another of those arrested as a Spaniard known as "Troy" who it said owned computer servers in "such distant places as Slovakia and Romania."

Interpol, which announced the arrests Tuesday, did not say how it encountered the 25 suspects, who it says were involved in cyberattacks originating from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain that targeted sites including Colombia's defense ministry and presidency and Chile's Endesa electricity company and national library.

Activists encountered in the chat room said some of those arrested belonged to a group of hackers called Sector404 while others were unsophisticated activists who took part in denial-of-service attacks, which overwhelm websites with data requests.

"The GREAT majority of those implicated were people inhabiting the servers of anonworld.info, something that disconcerts us," said the activist "Skao," who identified herself as a law student.

In the communique released on its blog, Anonymous Iberoamerica said the 25 were snared not through "inteligence work or informatics strategy" but rather through "the use of spies and informants within the movement."

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